Um… well, maybe the rainy season isn’t quite over yet. After just a few days of sunshine, we got a typhoon, and then a few days after that a 5-day rainstorm that will last through Sunday. It is the middle of August, and yet we not only have rain but low temperatures as well. Temps were in the low 20s C (low 70’s F).

However, the rain is supposed to break Sunday night, and at least a week of sunny weather is supposed to come from Monday. Too late for many Japanese revelers–the O-Bon season was at its height last week, and most people had that time off. The slowly-recovering Japanese economy has taken a bit of a hit from this: sales of beer and other cold beverages, summer clothing, air conditioners and other hot-weather items have fallen. I myself just picked up a pair of short pants and two nice short-sleeve cotton shirts, all for less than $30, at a department store in Minami Osawa the other day–discounted due to poor sales.

The rice crops have been hit by the weather as well, but not as hard as in 1993, when Japan had to resort to the unbelievably radical measure of actually importing some rice. I remember that time; I was here. I remember especially that American and even Australian rice, though imported, were very hard to find in pure form. Any foreign rice that neared or matched the quality of Japanese rice was mixed together with long-grained Thai rice, thoroughly unpopular here, in an attempt to protect the impression Japanese people have that Japanese rice is the best in the world and cannot be equalled.

Anyway, we won’t see anything as drastic as rice imports, but all the same, the toll is being taken. The question is, what does this unusually cool summer bode for the Fall and Winter?